Izvorni znanstveni članak
Venetian Subjects and Ottoman Exiles – the Emigrants from Shkodra in Venice (from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century)
Lovorka Čoralić
Sažetak
During Venice’s past, an indisputably important component of its social, religious and cultural history was formed by numerous immigrant national groups. Among Croatian, Greek, Armenian, German and other immigrant communities coming from areas other than Venice and Italy, an important place belonged also to the Albanian ethnic group. This was a numerous group of socially active immigrants coming or originating from the area of former Venetian acquisitions in the area of present-day Albania (Shkodra, Durrës, Drishti, and so on) and Montenegro. Within this, due to their number and influence among their compatriots belonging to the Albanian ethnic group, immigrants from the city of Shkodra should be particularly emphasised. As to their reputation and importance among Albanian immigrants even today, the artistically valuable relief placed on the façade of the seat of the formerly numerous, active and respectable Albanian national confraternity (Scuola degli Albanesi), on which there is as a central scene depicting the Ottoman siege of Shkodra in 1474, clearly testifies to this. The city, which was permanently lost to the Republic of Venice as early as 1479, suffered an exodus of the majority of its indigenous inhabitants during the second half of the fifteenth century, and particularly in the years immediately preceding or following the fall of the city under Ottoman rule. Venice, as the capital of the state to which Albanian cities belonged also, played a particularly marked role in this migration process. The analysis of diverse archival sources (in the first place the last wills of immigrants from Shkodra and other places from the wider area of the eastern Adriatic littoral) and the results of previous scholarship reveal that the major part of immigration from Shkodra to Venice happened even before the fall of the city under Ottoman rule (from the middle of the fifteenth century to its end) and that the reasons for emigration were to a great extent caused (as was also the case with the emigration from the neighbouring cities of Bar and Ulcinj) by the decades-long insecurity of life in the war-torn area of Albania, but also show that Venice – the metropolis of a common state for the area spreading from the north of Istria to the south of Albania – presented a destination for all its subjects, offering a better existence and a solution to their problems. In Venice the denizens of Shkodra, according to the numerous components of their everyday life and professional agency, made a part of numerically strong and ethnically heterogeneous immigrant community of people originating from the wider area of the eastern Adriatic. The places of their residence in Venice were in the first place situated in the typical immigrant city sestiere of Castello (particularly inhabited by Croats) and central city parishes in the sestiere of S. Marco, and in terms of professional agency they were mostly oriented towards seamanship and craft – traditional occupations for the whole maritime area of the eastern Adriatic and always frequently needed in Venice. Furthermore, the denizens of Shkodra were, as sources clearly testify, in their everyday life frequently oriented towards their compatriots (from Drishti, Durrës and the cities of present-day Montenegro), but they created numerous business and friendly connections also with the immigrants coming from the wider area of the eastern Adriatic (examples of such connections ranging from Požega and Zagreb to Dalmatian cities and Dubrovnik). When the everyday religious life of the denizens of Shkodra is discussed, as well as the forms of their relationships with the ecclesiastical institutions and members of the clergy in Venice, it is evident that they were completely immersed in the Venetian Catholic atmosphere. In the wills of immigrants from Shkodra numerous data refer to the gifts to Venetian churches, monasteries, confraternities and hospitals, in which cases in the first place come ecclesiastical institutions situated in areas and parishes of their residence and professional agency (Castello and S. Marco). Furthermore, the close connection of the immigrants of Shkodra with their national, Albanian confraternity, whose church many of the testators from Shkodra chose for their last resting place and to which many of them bequeathed a part of their property through numerous testamentary legacies, is evident also. In the conclusion it is stressed that the immigrants of Shkodra were a very important part of the Albanian immigrant community in Venice, but also a part of a wide migration wave, which, in the first place in connection with the Ottoman incursion and conquests, in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Age encompassed wide regions of the eastern Adriatic shore. From the research and analysis of sources referring to the immigrants of Shkodra and other immigrants to Venice, we may find also numerous additional data connected to Croatian trans-Adriatic migrations from the period between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century, by which, at the end, it becomes evident that the history of the eastern Adriatic (in the first place those parts under the rule of Venice) is in many its components undivided, as well as the importance of mutual permeation all over the Adriatic during the long centuries of their mutual past.
Ključne riječi
Venetian Albania; Shkodra; Venice; the Republic of Venice; migrations; Early Modern Age; Croatian history; ecclesiastical history; confraternities
Hrčak ID:
18618
URI
Datum izdavanja:
14.1.2008.
Posjeta: 2.873 *